


Workin' on Mysteries (without any clues)

by TourmalineGreen



Category: Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Oral Sex, PTSD, Unsafe Sex, and cuddles, clyde logan is a soft boy who just wants affection, don't worry y'all, now with MORE CHAPTERS, the logan curse, touch-starved boi, unrepentant soft affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:10:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen
Summary: She says her name is Ray. Clyde mutters that it’s a boy’s name, and she smiles at him like she’s heard that one before, and tells him, “It’s Rey, with an e in the middle.”Clyde asks her what she’s doin’ here in town, and Rey-with-an-e tells him she’s lookin’ for work as a mechanic. The look on his face must give him away, because her expression sours.“You think a girl isn’t capable of being a mechanic?”Clyde feels a strange sort of a thrill go through him when she fixes him with that glare. “No ma’am. My sister, Mellie, she knows e’rthing there is to know about trucks. I’d never presume to tell her she didn’t.”Rey-with-an-e looks at him over the top of her bottle of beer. “You know, it’s not usually advisable to flirt with a woman by calling her ma’am and comparing her to your sister.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bob Seger's classic, Night Moves. In honor of Clyde's taste in shirts.

After a few weeks, that FBI lady leaves town. Just takes her nice suits and her cold smile and goes, back to… well, back to wherever it was she came from. There’s nothing to tell her, and anyway, she doesn’t know to ask the right questions. Any leads she thinks she finds, any story she thinks she hears, ends up blowing away in the wind.

And Clyde is… he’s glad, he supposes. Doesn’t quite understand it, but… he thinks maybe, just maybe, the so-called Logan Curse has been avoided.

This time.

Clyde still doesn’t understand. He’s not a man prone to material wants; he’s happy enough with his life, with his new arm, even though it takes some getting used to, and some days he just prefers to go without. Eventually, he forgives his brother for giving much of the money back. And life goes on.

The new year comes ‘round after she’s gone. Then spring arrives, and the earth starts to thaw, new flowers bursting into life. Everything is as it ever was, except he has the money, now, to buy a single-wide not too far from work. It’s nice.

Then one day, there’s a new face at his bar, and Clyde Logan is utterly and completely thrown for a loop, for an entirely different reason.

That reason is about… five-foot-seven, with pretty brown hair and big brown eyes, and an accent that makes her sound like she’s from some kind of fairy-tale, far-away place. A place where everyone’s as pretty as her, as elegant, even in her cutoff jeans and too-big sweater. Isn’t she cold, in this weather, Clyde wants to ask? Instead, he asks her for her name.

She says her name is Ray. Clyde mutters that it’s a boy’s name, and she smiles at him like she’s heard that one before, and tells him, “It’s Rey, with an e in the middle.”

Clyde asks her what she’s doin’ here in town, and Rey-with-an-e tells him she’s lookin’ for work as a mechanic. The look on his face must give him away, because her expression sours.

“You think a girl isn’t capable of being a mechanic?”

Clyde feels a strange sort of a thrill go through him when she fixes him with that glare. “No ma’am. My sister, Mellie, she knows e’rthing there is to know about trucks. I’d never presume to tell her she didn’t.”

Rey-with-an-e looks at him over the top of her bottle of beer. “You know, it’s not usually advisable to flirt with a woman by calling her ma’am and comparing her to your sister.”

And Clyde is genuinely thrown at this; had he been flirting with her? He looks away, then, and goes back to wiping down the surface of the bar. She’s still watching him, and he finds he… he likes it. He likes the way her eyes sweep up and down his body. Likes the way she pulls a bit of her hair back up and ties it so it’s out of her face, with one of those elastics on her wrist. She’s pretty. And he’s a man, and he feels the same as any other man feels, even if he’s missing a hand. He’s a whole man, in every other way that matters.

“What’s your name, then?” Rey-with-an-e asks him.

“Clyde Logan,” he tells her.

And when he looks up, the pretty young lady is smiling at him, a closed-mouth, shy kind of smile, and a blush on her cheeks to match.

“Nice to meet you, Clyde Logan.”

When she pays, and leaves, Clyde has the faintly dumbstruck feeling like someone’s hit him upside the head with a two-by. Much later, he realizes, he never did get the rest of her name.

* * *

 

Clyde takes his truck in to have Earl look at the radiator, and he’s surprised but pleased to see Rey-with-an-e is working for Earl, now. She’s wearing coveralls, and has her hair pulled back up in three cute little buns like a mohawk, and Clyde has that dumbstruck feeling all over again when she fixes him with a smile.

Lord, but she’s beautiful.

Even like this… maybe especially like this, wiping her hands on a grease-stained rag, the cuffs of her coveralls rolled up to reveal tanned forearms. He says hello to her, low and shy again like a boy half his age, and she shows him her dimples when she smiles a hello in response. There’s a dusting of freckles across her nose, he sees; Clyde’s a simple man, with an appreciation for straightforward, plain-spoken talk, but he suddenly is struck by the fascination that she might have more freckles, elsewhere, everywhere, and oh, wouldn’t he just love to find out.

Rey props open the hood of his truck, and begins working.

Clyde just… tries not to stare at her, not at her legs or her pert little ass, or the slope of her back, or her hands as they work… he tries, he tries very hard, tries to think, if another man were lookin’ at my sister like this, I’d acquaint my singular fist with his face. Rey might be someone’s sister, and he ought to be thinking pure and wholesome thoughts, but she sure as hell ain’t his sister.

He keeps his hand to himself. And his thoughts.

And if his heart swells a little more when she chides him at how easily-fixed the problem is in his truck, well. He always did have a thing for a woman who could show him his place.

* * *

 

Rey-with-an-e stays at his bar until closing time one night, about three weeks after her arrival in town. Clyde kicks out the regulars and prepares to close up as usual, but somehow, doesn’t have the heart to kick her out, too. He goes through all the steps, cleaning the bar, closing up the little containers of olives and lemons and limes and onions on the counter, checks the back-door locks…

And when he comes back up to the front, she’s slumped over the bar, head pillowed on her arm, snoring softly.

Asleep.

In that moment, Clyde flashes back to a time when he’d been just a little boy, reading at his mama’s knee. There’d been a big book of legends and myths that he’d requested whenever the mobile library had come through, and his mama had indulged him, reading the same stories to him over and over again.

In one of them, a princess had been cursed to sleep forever, until the kiss of her true love awakened her. Clyde had been of an age where kissing a girl didn’t seem to be so bad, but of course, Jimmy had screwed up his face at this, and Mellie, well, Mellie had been two, then, and squalling for attention so often, Clyde’d been left with the book of stories on his lap. Legs stuck out straight on the faded floral davenport, he’d looked at the watercolor illustration. The golden-haired princess, and the soft-looking man in armor who bent over to offer true love’s kiss.

He thinks about that now, when Rey sleeps in what has to be a very uncomfortable position. He thinks about it, kissing her awake, seeing her smile when she looks at him.

Like many of the things he thinks about, he does not act on them.

Instead, he prods her shoulder gently.

“Hey.”

She snorks, and screws up her face a little.

He prods her again. “Rey. Closin’ time. You gotta be gettin’ home now.”

Her eyes open, bleary and unfocused. How much has she had tonight? She’s smaller than him, but then again, most women are. And she ain’t delicate, not in the least. She can handle her drink.

The smile she gives him, though… that has to be from the liquor.

“Rey, you need to be up, you need to go on home.”

“Alright,” she says, her accent mussing up the words in a way that makes his throat get tight and… and other parts of him get tight, too. In a way.

Then she stands up from the bar stool, smiles a big, broad, toothy smile at him… and promptly falls, face-first, into his arms.

Clyde has two arms; he likes to clarify it for people who say he’d lost one, when truly he lost just the hand. A transradial amputation, to be precise. He has two arms, and both of them wrap around her, and she throws him off-balance just a little before he recovers, and stands her back on her feet.

“Why do you smell so nice, Clyde?” she slurs against his chest, twisting her hands into the front of his chambray shirt, rubbing her cheek against the fabric.

Girl’s drunker than a skunk; she can’t drive herself home, not like this.

So Clyde does the gentlemanly thing. He picks her up, bridal-carry style, and carries her out to his car.

She falls back asleep in his arms before his feet even touch gravel.

* * *

 

Clyde isn’t a monster.

He thinks about all the things he ought not to do, same as any man, as the girl drools on his shoulder the whole bumpy ride home. He chances a smell of her hair, breathes in just one nice breath of Rey’s pretty scent, and considers the fact that she works up to her elbows in grease all day, and yet still smells ever-so-lightly of flowers. He thinks about the way her sweater has fallen down to reveal the strap of her bra, about how if he turned on the interior light of his truck, he might be able to see if she really did have freckles on her shoulders.

He thinks about all sorts of things, pushes all those dark thoughts down and only touches her when he’s back at his single-wide, carrying her inside.

He isn’t a monster.

Rey sleeps on his bed, and he takes the couch, stretching out his long frame as far as he can on the too-short, too-narrow space.

In the other room, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen is sleeping, fully-clothed, on his bed. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll be able to smell those flowers in her hair on his pillow tomorrow. That’d be a nice memory.

He’s no prince. There’s no magical kiss to give her, no way to wake her and keep his conscience intact. The rest of him is broken, but that, at least, remains true. Some days he feels it’s all he has, the days when someone drops a glass in the bar, and Clyde feels like diving behind the bar and taking cover. The days when he hears a car backfire, and remembers the heat of the blast and the cruel endless tan heat of the Iraqi desert. The tang of blood and fear.

He sleeps with his prosthetic on, that night. Tries to find a way to be semi-comfortable, while the old strap rubs into his arm.

Not a monster, not a prince, just a man. Just Clyde. That’s all he is.

* * *

 

Morning comes, and Clyde startles awake; he’s being watched, and for the briefest of moments, the familiar panic takes him. He bolts upright, nearly falling off the couch, and Rey-with-an-e steps back from him, her brown eyes widening.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.

Clyde just shakes his head, runs his fingers through his hair. “I’ll drive you home now, if you like.”

“Alright,” Rey says. But she doesn’t move, doesn’t stop looking at him. “Thank you. For last night. Not many guys would’ve…”

“Well. They should.” Clyde scratches at the scruff on his jaw, and looks up at her. “You feelin’ okay?”

Rey nods, but there’s a fragile weariness to her red-rimmed eyes that says otherwise. She’s wearing her clothing from last night; Clyde didn’t even touch her to take her shoes off. But now, he sees she’s standing there, barefoot.

“You want some coffee?”

“That’d be nice, thanks,” she replies.

Okay.

Coffee. He can make coffee.

He gets up, and goes into the kitchen.

* * *

 

Somewhere between turning his back to her to put their dishes in the sink and reaching for the handle of the faucet, he feels her warmth come up behind him, feels a hand wrap around his torso, and Clyde goes absolutely still as a stone.

Hard as a stone, too.

It’s been so long, since a woman touched him like this. Rey slips her hand in between the buttons of his sleep-rumpled chambray shirt, her palm flat on his belly, and oh, there’s no mistaking the intention of that. Even through his mock-neck undershirt he can feel her touch.

Despite himself, Clyde groans softly, and his belly flexes.

“Why didn’t you just.... take whatever it was you wanted, last night?” Rey asks him softly. “You’re a big man; you could’ve done it, and I never would’ve been able to stop you.”

“That’s not the way I prefer to be… intimate,” Clyde says, his voice as soft as the wind. “Didn’t seem right. To… take advantage.”

“But you still took me to your home,” she continues, her hand working the row of buttons free, slowly, slowly. “Am I taking advantage of you now?”

He shakes his head. A bit too quickly, it seems, because he can feel her soft laughter against his back.

Lord. Her head barely comes up to his shoulders. He’s so much bigger than her, and he can’t deny the fact that, yes, she’s right, he could’ve come in there in the night, pinned her down, done… whatever it is a man with no conscience might do to a lady. It would’ve been so easy. Hell, some men might’ve seen her drunkenness as blanket permission.

He knows, bone-deep, that he’d never in a million years do such a thing. In fact, he can hardly make his body breathe at all, under just this light touch. It takes full focus and concentration just to not pass out.

It’s been so damn long. Since before the war. Back when he was… well, when all of him was present and accounted for.

Her hand is still moving. And he doesn’t dare turn around.

“I trust you, Clyde Logan,” Rey says softly. “I feel like I can trust you. Do you trust me?”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, voice rough with a desire he can’t quite contain.

Her hands unbutton his shirt, tug it out of the waistband of his jeans. Slowly, she moves to pull it off of his shoulders, and then he does have to turn around, because it comes off the one, but gets caught on the other.

On the buckle, on his arm.

Standing there in his black undershirt, looking down at the girl with an incredulous, grateful expression, Clyde follows her gaze over to his arm.

“You don’t take it off, to sleep?” she asks.

“I do,” he says. “And during the day sometimes, but I… I didn’t… a woman like you, you deserve a… a whole man.”

Rey just smiles at him. “Clyde Logan, do you want to know a secret? I learned a long time ago to stop caring about what other people thought I deserved. Right now, I want what feels good. And you make me feel good. Do I make you feel good?”

His voice is barely a whisper. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rey takes her hands and places them on his chest, just feeling him. Clyde thinks she can probably feel his heart pounding even with her gentle touch. She trails her hands lower, and lower still, until she’s tugging the hem of this shirt the rest of the way out of his waistband. He helps her, this time. Pulling the shirt up and over his head, tossing it onto the floor with the other one.

And then he’s shirtless, and she’s still here, still touching him, still looking at him with that look in her eyes…

Maybe he died last night, Clyde thinks hazily. Maybe he rolled the truck on the way home, and he’s dead in a ditch somewhere, and this is heaven.

“Aren’t you a sight,” she says appreciatively, sweeping her fingers slowly across the lines of muscle on his chest.

Clyde can’t even form a reply to this; he knows, rationally, that he’s done his best to keep up with his health and exercise after being discharged. He knows he’s always been big, a big baby, a tall and gangly youth, and now a man grown, with muscles and arms and shoulders… he doesn’t feel prone to vanity about his body, but the way she’s touching him makes him feel…

Precious.

The word almost makes him laugh, if it wasn’t for the serious appreciation and study Rey is currently applying to the planes of his chest.

 _I want you,_ he wants to say. _I want to take you to bed, smell the flowers in your hair, kiss all of your freckles, hear the noises you make for me, only for me..._

Instead, he just groans, helpless and lost. And Rey smiles, like she understands. Her hands go to his fly; her eyes meet his.

He swallows, thickly, and nods.

* * *

 

Back in his bedroom, she’s divested him of his belt and jeans, and he’s standing there at attention as she shucks off her sweater and leggings. She’s pretty, so damn pretty, miles of tan skin and freckles, he just knew there’d be freckles. His mouth feels dry, his head a little woozy from the sheer amount of blood that’s been rushing southwards.

She’s got no bra on, now. His hand aches to touch her breast; he flexes it at his side, trying to think of what he’s supposed to do now. He lifts his hand, then, when she steps a little closer, and touches.

She doesn’t run away. Doesn’t flinch, doesn’t startle; she isn’t some bird, in the forest. She’s a warm and soft woman, with… with lovely breasts, and they fit in the palm of his hand like… like…

“Clyde,” she says softly. “Are you breathing?”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, his cock twitching and eager in his boxers.

This ought to be ridiculous. This isn’t his first time. Back in the day, there were plenty of girls who wanted to get a shot with Jimmy Logan’s little brother, on their way to Jimmy, he knew, but… they’d been willing, and they hadn’t all been disappointed, and Clyde knows a thing or two, or so he likes to think. Some of them had even been sweet on him.

This is so… this is so different. He hardly knows where to begin.

Rey makes a happy noise when his palm brushes across the crest of her peaked nipple. He does it again, and is rewarded with another happy noise. He gently rolls the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and her sweet mouth falls open a little, a throatier noise rolling out of her like thunder in the distance.

“I like that,” she says.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. Blurts out, more like. Almost instantly, he can feel the blush creep out all the way to his ears.

Eyes still closed, Rey smiles.

Her hands go to his waist, and Clyde flinches. They’re a little cold, and he’s… he’s a little ticklish there. He’d forgotten. While his hand plays with her breast the other one, the plastic one, hangs there, uselessly. Rey puts her hands down his boxers then and grasps him.

Clyde gasps, and just about falls over.

She encircles him in her fist, working up and down his length. Christ; her hands don’t even wrap the whole way ‘round him…

“This okay?”

His answer is just a series of eager spurts into his boxers, pleasure cresting and damn near blinding him as she works her little hand around him, finishing him off within seconds.

Damn.

Clyde opens his eyes, and feels like apologizing. His hand is on her waist, holding her, just there, like he’s afraid she’ll turn to smoke if he lets go.

“There,” Rey just says gently, giving his cock one more squeeze before withdrawing her hand. “That’s a bit better.”

“I’m sorry,” he begins, but Rey just backs him up to the bed, and eases him down on it. She’s not disappointed, clearly, and she’s not going anywhere. She slips her thumbs underneath her panties, then, and pulls them down, and if Clyde hadn’t just come in his pants he would’ve done so at the sight of her like this. The dark thatch of hair at the junction of her thighs, the slim-hipped perfection of her lithe body…

But then she reaches, not for his boxers, but for his arm.

Immediately, Clyde flinches.

Rey stills, her hands hovering in mid-air. “Clyde… is this okay?”

“Yes,” he says. “It’s fine, I want… I just…”

“I want to see,” she says gently. “Is that alright? You can say no…”

He hesitates only a moment longer, then reaches over, and undoes the straps.

When the prosthetic comes off, his forearm feels cool and a little sensitive; constantly being covered means the hairs on his arm there have worn off a little, the sensations a little more tender, a little more acute.

She brushes her fingertips down his arm, then, watching him, watching as the shorter hairs there rise up into goose-pimples in the wake of her touch.

“Tell me,” Rey says. “Tell me, if I do something to you that you don’t like.”

“I like everything,” he says, and he’s too far gone to be embarrassed by how easily she draws out that confession. It’s the truth.

He likes everything. He likes her long legs and her dark curls, he likes the way she bucks her hips towards him when he covers her with his hand; he likes the way she lets him touch her, the way she tastes when he draws his fingers back into his mouth.

Clyde sees her crawl onto the bed, and he hastily remembers that he’s come in his drawers once already; they’re sticking to his skin, and he needs to get them back off as quickly as possible, because he’s impossibly hard again.

He draws his sticky boxers off of his legs, uses them to mop up the mess he’s already made. Clyde is thirty-two, but he feels like he’s ten years younger when Rey lays alongside him like that—eager and filled with want. When he throws the soiled boxers down to the floor, her hand goes around him again, and oh, there’s a rush of simple-minded pride and heated need at the look she gives his erection.

“You’re big everywhere, aren’t you…”

Clyde supposes he is—other girls have told him as much—but it’s not about the size of the engine, it’s how you negotiate the curves of the track that matters.

And right about now, he’s got some enticing negotiations all spread out before him.

“Rey, I… I wanna make you feel good.”

“Alright,” she says, and she works her hand up and down his renewed erection, looking at him from under lowered lashes.

“No, I mean—well, yes, but—” He shifts, then, gaining control of his body now that he knows what it is he wants to do to her, with her. She’s a little amused when he moves above her, one hand down on the mattress as he cages her in.

He kisses her.

She tastes like coffee, his coffee, and the bacon and eggs he made for her, and she’s perfect, she’s perfect, he’s never tasted anything so sweet before.

Clyde knows that, further down, she’ll be even sweeter yet. But when she realizes what he’s doing, where he’s going when he kisses down the center of her breasts, around her navel, down along the edge of her crisp, darker curls, she tries in vain to close her legs.

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Clyde says to her inner thigh.

So she relaxes. Lays her legs a little wider, even though he can feel she’s trembling under her skin. Clyde’s half off the bed now, his erection trapped between his heavy hips and the resistance of the mattress. Down close, she doesn’t smell at all like flowers, just musk and salt and sweat, and he loves it already.

“I could wash—”

Her words cut off on a squeal when he lays his mouth on her. The taste of her fills his mouth, and he’s in heaven, working his tongue in long, slow licks, broad against the delicate flesh. He tries out more direct pressure, swirling around her entrance, and she groans, grinding her hips up against his face; then he moves lower, lapping up the wetness, hearing her eager noises even as she clamps her legs down about his ears.

With eager hands she guides him, fingers in his hair, telling him what she likes.

At her request he slides two fingers into her, and she’s so wet and tight and velvet-smooth Clyde just about comes again at the feel of her. He lays his arm across her belly, and holds her down a little, feeling her muscles flutter and clench, inside as well as out—

Then she’s coming, hard, making all kinds of noises, gushing a little with a slick that coats his chin, and he drinks her down like it’s is a gift.

Slowly, she comes on down from her peak; he eases his two fingers out of her, raises his head and looks up, taking in the sight of her, flushed and disheveled on his bedsheets. Glowing, in the morning light.

Perfect.

She calls his name softly. Opens her arms and welcomes him as he crawls up the bed. And Clyde takes a little detour to wipe his face and chin and mouth so he can kiss her proper, angling his hips in the cradle of her thighs.

Her little hand comes down between them; she guides the blunt head of him against her slick entrance as he lowers down, supporting himself on his forearms, gliding into her tight, wet body.

Perfect.

“Clyde,” she groans.

“I got you, darlin’” is all he can manage, his body working on overdrive to not just pump into her and hurt her, finish inside in two seconds flat.

Rey whimpers again as he moves; Clyde looks down at her face, sees the wrinkle on her brow and the way she bites her lip.

“Y’allright?”

“Yeah,” she says. “You’re just… big.”

His first instinct is to fret about that, but the way she says it tells him that it’s the opposite of a problem. Fuck. She’s perfect.

He moves, slowly at first, letting her get used to him. It's good. More than good—words don’t much matter, compared to the feelings. Clyde wants so much to be able to put both hands down on the bed, tilt his hips and move like he used to move.

Clyde can’t do that, but he still gives it to her nice and slow—then lets her flip them over, moves her bent knees up on either side of his torso and feels her go all pliant and open for him. He can hold her better like this, go even deeper like this, he finds—his arm around her back, his hand on her waist, hips pumping up into her with wet, filthy sounds.

“Harder,” she breathes into his ear, mouthing at his neck as he obliges her eagerly. “Harder—you’re not going to hurt me.”

Perfect.

The rest of it is a blur of skin and taste and touch. Hips pumping, her body yielding, her mouth making little, soft noises, then sharper ones, when his pace increases.

He calls her name when he comes, feeling the pleasure draw deep from his balls, from his spine. It hits him like a semi, slams into him like he’s slamming into her, taking him wholly by surprise. She just clings to him, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth and—oh Jesus, her teeth on his neck. He comes and shudders and cries out, holding her so tight, driving in so deep he imagines he’ll leave a mark inside of her, staking his claim.

Rey covers his sweat-misted face in kisses as he catches his breath, as he comes down from it. She moves his hair off of his face, nuzzles at the scruff on his jaw, his chin. Nips at one of his prominent ears.

Clyde doesn’t want to open his eyes.

He knows that now, when the pleasure ebbs away, that’s when it’s her cue to get up and go. He braces himself for it as he slips out of her, readies himself to say whatever needs to be said, if only his brain or mouth was working… He just feels wrung-out, like a sponge.

She gets up off the bed, leaving him cold and still faintly breathless. He hears her go to the toilet, wonders if she’ll just put her clothes back on and ask for a ride into town.

He can do that, he thinks. He can find a way to be alright when she comes into the bar next time.

And Clyde’s almost ready to get up and find clean boxers when she comes out of the bathroom, still in her altogether, and looks down at him.

“Everything alright, Clyde?”

He nods.

“Good.” She smiles, then, and gets back on the bed, laying next to him, drawing the blankets over them both. “Good.”

Clyde smiles.

She’s perfect.

* * *

 

Later, when they’re laying together in the mid-morning sunshine, Clyde feels Rey nestle in a little closer beside him, and he tightens his arm around her. This makes her smile, he sees. Which means it makes him smile, too.

With her head pillowed on his chest, all he has to do is tilt his head a little bit, and he can breathe in the smell of her. Flowers, and sweat, and engine grease, and sweetness… He doesn’t limit himself, now, to just one breath in.

She’s perfect.

“Rey,” he says softly, when those big brown eyes open up and look at him, when her hand reaches out to splay across his chest, right over his heart.

“Mmm?”

“You know, you never did tell me your last name.”

Rey laughs at this, and the look on her face wrinkles her nose all up at the top. “I hate it.”

“Hate what?”

“My last name,” she says.

Clyde Logan looks down at her; he’s never been more serious about anything in his entire life.

“Well… D’you want a new one?”  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Jimmy comes up to visit from Lynchburg for the weekend, to visit Mellie and Clyde and see how things are going on, and when he comes into the bar one evening it takes him all of four seconds to see that his little brother is completely gone on the brown-eyed girl with the big smile sitting three seats down. He still thinks of Clyde as his little brother, even though he’s got a good three inches on him now. Jimmy’s still protective of Clyde, the way a big brother can be. Doesn’t want to see his brother get his heart broken, or taken for a ride, by a pair of pretty eyes. Still, Clyde knows his own mind.

And Clyde… well, Clyde’s a man grown now. A man who’s had a rough enough life as he has, what with the arm and the… war and… everything else that came with it. He always was a serious kid, gentle-hearted and eager to please. He deserves to be with a nice girl, someone who’ll make him smile like he’s been smiling tonight, every time he looks at her.

Smiling. Clyde, _smiling_.

Jimmy takes another drink from his bottle of beer. He may be a man grown, but Clyde is still his little brother. And so, it’s with a big-brother’s inescapable urge to tease that he waits, and observes, and bides his time.

Miss Brown-eyes gets up to use the facilities, and Clyde watches her go with eyes like a lovesick puppy. As soon as she’s out of earshot, Jimmy can’t help himself.

“So,” he says, “you given her the Logan Curse talk yet, so she knows what she’s getting herself into?”

Clyde looks down at the bar, a pint glass in his hand and a serious expression on his face. “I do not know to what you are referring.”

Jimmy actually laughs at this—a bark of a loud laugh—and he takes a swig from his Coors Light before shaking his head. “Brother of mine, you are many things, but none of them are particularly subtle. What’s her name?”

“Rey,” Clyde reluctantly surrenders. “Rey, with an e in the middle. It’s not a man’s name.”

He’s wiping down the bar like he’s trying to wear through the wood. Jimmy grins.

“Rey with an e in the middle,” Jimmy echoes. “And a Clyde in there somewhere too, I reckon?”

Clyde just glares.

“I’m just messin’ witcha,” Jimmy says, partially because he loves his brother, he does, and partially because he’s never really seen Clyde like this. Not recently, anyway. Not after. “She’s pretty. Where’d you two meet?”

“Here,” is all Clyde says.

In the background, the rhythmic sounds of Dr. John’s guitar float through the air, through the sound of the guys in the back playing pool, the talking and laughing, the clink of glasses on wood. It’s Saturday night, about as busy as it normally is, and it feels good to come back here and find things the way they’ve always been.

Well. Very nearly.

Because then Brown-eyes comes back and slides herself elegantly into the seat she’d vacated a few moments before, glancing over at Jimmy with a friendly-but-not-invitational sort of look. Clyde’s eyes instantly snap back to hers, like she’s a checkered flag and he’s being urged to slow down and pay attention to her by some primal force.

Jimmy represses a laugh into his beer. This is amazing.

“So, are you from the area?” Jimmy turns and asks her, half-expecting her to say something about how she went to Valley View, but not when he was there; she looks young, maybe in her early twenties, so they wouldn’t’ve been there at the same time…

“Not particularly, no,” Rey says to him, her voice as crisp and unexpected as a walk through a pile of autumn leaves on a hot summer day.

“You’re a… British?”

“Yes, Jimmy Logan, I am, in fact, ‘a British.’” Rey grins.

“Sorry, I misspoke,” Jimmy says, as Clyde fixes him with a glare that could melt paint off a wall.

“No offence taken,” Rey says quickly, giving Clyde a gentle look, receiving back the warmest, soft-eyed little smile in response.

Ooh, but she does have him wrapped around her finger.  

Clyde turns, then, and gets her a cold beer from the fridge. Rey turns a little on the chair, crossing her slim and… really quite pretty legs, and leaning her elbow on the counter. She’s wearing a strappy sort of yellow top with little flower buttons down the front, and cutoff jeans and tennis shoes. Jimmy can see the edge of engine grease under her short-trimmed nails. A contradiction, this one. He can’t pin her down.

“You know me, then,” Jimmy says. “Which means my brother here has told you all manner of falsehoods and my reputation has likely preceded me.”

“I—” Clyde begins, but Rey just laughs.

“Only good things, I can assure you.”

Jimmy casts a glance at his brother. He’s just staring there, all dark-eyed and glowering. Jimmy can’t quite read him. He looks back over at Rey.

“Nah it’s just… it’s refreshing, really, to meet someone here who don’t know who I am.”

“And should I know who you are?”

“Jimmy here was something of a football star, back in high school,” Clyde provides. “I expect it’s refreshing for him not to be reminded of that.”

“As you clearly just did, thank you for that,” Jimmy grouses back. “High school was a long time ago. People change.”

“Not that much, sometimes,” Clyde says, still glaring.

And then it clicks. Jimmy realizes that his brother is… territorial. That’s what this is. He thinks Jimmy’s gonna hit on his girl, charm her like he did pretty much all the cute girls back in high school. Wasn’t his fault, if many of them wanted to make it with a football star, and anyway, it’s not really that pertinent anymore. If anything, it’s a little embarrassing. But he’s genuinely never seen Clyde like this—although, granted, Clyde tends to keep things pretty close to the vest. For him to be this visibly upset by the mere prospect of competition, it’s… pretty interesting.

Sure speaks to how much this brown-eyed girl has charmed him, Jimmy thinks.

Well, he’s no competition. Wouldn’t want to cross that line, even if he was available. He ain’t that kind of man, to poach off of his own brother.

“Hey, you remember Sylvia Harrison?” Jimmy says, turning just a little away from Rey, trying to get Clyde’s attention.

Clyde blinks at him. “Yes. She was in… my year?”

Jimmy nods. “Well, she and I… we’ve been seeing each other, a bit. Here and there.”

Clyde looks at him, the wariness and protective glower fading from his face just a little. He nods, and picks up the crumpled wet rag he’d been using to wipe the counter.

“That’s… nice,” he says, unfolding and re-folding it, tidying it up. “She always was sweet on you.”

Jimmy smiles, and takes a drink of his beer. He knows this. And it feels nice, to be at the beginnings of a relationship that feels so full of promise, so new and different, from everything that seemed to go sideways with Bobbie Jo.

“And how’s Sadie doin’?” Clyde asks, his voice a little calmer now, less of an edge to it. “Is she likin’ her new school down in Lynchburg?”

Jimmy nods as he swallows the last gulp of beer and sets the empty down on the bar. “Yeah, s’far as I can tell she’s adjustin’ just fine. Makin’ new friends. She’s happy.”

“Well, that’s good, then.”

Jimmy casts the girl a sidelong glance, seeing that she’s watching Clyde again, matching his quietly lovestruck look, before Clyde goes to tend to his work. Two guys have come in, wearing overalls and sweat-drenched shirts, come in from the summer heat to find what little cool refreshment is to be found as the air conditioners in the windows chug away, and the fans circulate the semi-stagnant air as best they can. Clyde goes down to serve them, and Jimmy sees her eyes follow him, even with his back turned.

It’s actually pretty cute.

Jimmy turns back to her, and she looks over at him, smiling a little, like she’s been caught.

“What’d you say your name was again?” he asks her. “I don’t think I caught your last name.”

“Rey,” she replies, and offers her hand for him to shake. “Rey Logan.”

Jimmy takes her hand, shakes it once—then blinks. “What, now?”

* * *

 

They decide to go down the courthouse on a slow Tuesday afternoon, Rey in a pretty white lace dress that Mellie finds in an antiques store, with her hair all down and curled and pretty. They don’t get rings for each other, mostly because Clyde doesn’t have a left hand to put one on, and it just seems unfair for her to wear one if he can’t. Instead, afterwards, they go to get matching tattoos on their inner right wrists.

Clyde chooses a sun, because she’s his light, his sunshine. Rey gets a crescent moon, because it looks like the first letter of his name, and because he pulls her in, like the tides. (And, she tells him later, because she always imagines an ocean, when she looks into his eyes. A deep, dark ocean, not a frightening place at all, but a place yet to be explored.)

Afterwards, Mellie ties cans and streamers to the bumper of his truck, and they drive on home to Clyde’s single-wide, man and wife, elated.

It is six weeks to the day from when they met. It doesn’t feel too soon at all; if anything, it feels, to him, like he’s been waiting his whole life for her. Rey tells him, as she stands in his home—their home, now—that she feels exactly the same way.

They stand there in the living room, her in her white dress, and him in his nicest shirt and newest jeans, and it’s like meeting each other all over again.

He never thought he’d be in this situation, with a… a wife, but here he is.

“Mrs. Logan,” Clyde says softly, running just a fingertip underneath the little strap of her pretty white dress. “I’d like to take you to bed now.”

“Mr. Logan,” Rey replies, “I’d like that very much.”

* * *

 

When Rey thinks back to when she first arrived in town, she never in her wildest imaginings thought it would’ve ended up like this. She’s always been a drifter, carried by the winds to new places, always searching for a place that would feel like home, bring her answers, help her settle down and grow roots at last.

She doesn’t expect that place to be rural West Virginia, and she certainly doesn’t expect the answers she seeks to be ‘a one-armed bartender named Clyde, who will treat you like you’re a precious thing, make love to you every night like it’s the last night on earth, and give you his name, his heart, his everything.’

Clyde takes her completely by surprise.

It’s a good kind of surprise. The very best.

And maybe, it’s in a place like this, with its slower life and soft sunshine, that Rey can find it doesn’t much matter who she was, who her unknown family was, or why they abandoned her in front of a fire station in central London. The past doesn’t matter anymore, so she lets it die away, and welcomes the future with open arms.

Above her, Clyde Logan—her _husband_ —bends down, wrapping her in his embrace. He smells like juniper and cedar and the memory of woodsmoke, sweet and earthy and wonderful, and Rey breathes him in. After all their times together, all the moments where they’d explored each other, made love or fucked or done something equally wondering somewhere in-between those two extremes, this feels, somehow, like the first time.

In a way, it is.

And yet it’s so wonderfully familiar, there’s no fear anymore. No worry that he’ll just… take what he wants from her, and walk away. Shoo her out the room, move on.

It feels good, Rey thinks, to be so wanted.

It feels good, to want, and to receive, and to know she has something wonderful to come home to. Home. This man, Clyde, her husband—this is home.

“What am I gonna do with you, Mrs. Logan?” Clyde says, his breath warm in her hair as he all but nuzzles against her.

Rey smiles into his chest; her hand slides lower, shamelessly feeling him up, feeling the growing and eager hardness through his jeans and button-fly.

“Whatever you like, Mr. Logan.”

He laughs at this. She loves to hear him laugh; he does it so rarely, it makes it feel like it’s a private thing, something just her own.

How different it is, to be with him.

Rey’s first time had been an awkward, fumbling affair with a boy from her secondary school who’d had glossy blonde hair, a popped collar, and an aura of body spray. He’d taken her virginity with a smug smile and a callous disregard, and Rey had been left wondering if that was really all it was cracked up to be. Maybe it had been some inexperience on her part, or maybe she was just… missing out on some other fundamental component.

She’d been fine when it was just her hand and her fantasies. But the way the other girls talked about it, with their knowing looks, their cigarettes hanging from their lips and their rumpled uniform jackets tied around their waists, Rey couldn’t understand.

She liked the rest of it just fine—the holding, the contact, the touch—and sometimes, it was even… nice. But most times, she just felt… deficient.

With Clyde, however… Rey didn’t feel deficient. And neither that first attempt, nor any of the ones which followed, even warranted the slightest bit of concern. He didn’t seem to be growing tired of her yet, if the whole marriage thing was any indication.

Clyde touched her like a delicate thing; his touch made her feel strong, formidable, like an ancient queen, consorting with a primal god of the forest. An absurd comparison, she knows, but he moves her, fills her lungs with each in-drawn breath. He’s inside of her, deeper than he can feel, stronger than she can separate from herself. To be loved like this…

Rey feels him draw the strap down over her shoulder, resting it against her upper arm as he leans down and peppers each freckle there with a soft kiss, like he’s counting them, reassuring himself that they’re still there. She tilts her head to the side a little, feeling his mouth make its way up to the pulse thrumming wildly in her neck. He nips there, just a little blessing of teeth, soothed by his mouth. How he lights her on fire with just a little movement, Rey will never understand. There’s a wild alchemy in his skin, and she wants nothing more than to spend her whole life trying to decant it into her own.

The dress itself is made of off-white lace and eyelet linen, so fragile, so delicate; he could tear it, if he wanted to—and some wild part of her wants him to, just to see that power in his body come to the surface. He could hurt her, but he doesn’t. He could conquer her, but he asks instead. Politely, with his mouth, his touch, his gentle looks. His hand comes around to her back, tugging at the zipper, pulling it down. He takes his time, and oh, it’s so good, the way he draws the other strap down, too, until her bare breasts are freed to him.

When he notices that she’s not wearing a bra, he makes a low, appreciative noise. There was a time where she’d felt a little self-conscious about them, about their size. A life on the edge of deprivation, coupled with a tendency towards leanness, has given her a body that’s functional but never, she thinks, overtly sensual. Not on the obvious way that some men go wild for. But now she stands there and lets him disrobe her, feels the heat of his gaze, the studious warmth; he looks at her body like he wants to sear it into the back of his brain, commit it to memory, every time he sees her.

It’s enough to make a girl blush.

This time, unlike their first time, there’s no hesitation in his touch. Just soft reverence, cupping her small breast in his hand, dwarfing it easily, and it ought to make her feel frightened, being towered over, encompassed, contained, but Rey feels a deep, abiding comfort like she’s never known before, the feeling that she can just let go, lean in—and he’ll be there to catch her.

The rest of the dress wiggles down over her hips, and he takes in the sight of her, the pair of white panties she’s wearing, with sheer mesh on the front and back and soft, delicate lace on the sides. Rey knows he’s never seen them before; she’d bought them discreetly when she’d been out shopping in town with Mellie. The intake of breath he makes when he sees them is well worth the expense. And there’s a tiny bow on the center front, and Clyde lowers his hand, his thumb nearly reaching up her sternum as his fingertip brushes across the bow. Then his hand moves lower, tucking itself into her panties, not pulling them down quite yet, just feeling her there. It feels soft, and illicit, and almost a little forbidden. He’s so contained; he contains her, when she feels like she could fly apart at any moment.

“D’y like this, Rey?” he says softly, two thick fingers parting her slick folds, parting, and just teasing, running along the seam of her. “When I touch you like this, do you like it?”

“You know I do,” is her breathless reply.

He makes a noise that’s almost like a purr, and Rey lifts her hands to his chest, working them at the buttons of his shirt. He’d gone without his prosthetic today, so her right hand finds his bare skin, his forearm, underneath his rolled-up cuff, while her left hand fumbles with the buttons. He needs to take his shirt off, already; she needs to see him, to touch—

“Mm,” he growls, circling his fingers around her clit slowly, deliberately. “You’re gonna come for me first, like this. Can y’do that for me, Rey?”

She nods, biting her lip. God, she loves it when his voice gets all low and husky, when his accent gets thick, and his _hands…_ His pace increases, then, but only just. He’s careful, steady and sure, as he coaxes it from her body. Her form is a textbook, and he, a devoted student. She runs her hands along what little skin she can touch, leans into him, gives herself over to it as it rises. It’s just not entirely fair, that she’s so exposed to him and he won’t give her the courtesy of disrobing, but the way he looks now, so caught up in his single-minded quest for her pleasure—the idea that she distracts him this much, he can’t even undress properly—is enough to make Rey cry out a little, hold onto him, and let the first of what’s sure to be many orgasms wash over her like a warm and easy wave.

“That’s a good girl,” Clyde tells her, his voice warm and low in her ear as his hands slip out of her panties. “You’re not gonna fall over on me, now, are ya?”

Rey smiles, and shakes her head. “No.”

He picks her up all the same.

She curls into him, feeling his strong arms as he lifts her like she weighs nothing at all. How can he be so strong? Rey learned, after that night they shared, never to underestimate him. He carried her in like this, even before he knew he’d be carrying her over their threshold. She’s so lucky, she thinks. He’s tucked his forearm under her legs, and curled his hand around behind her back, and she wrapped her own arms around his neck, turning and breathing into the strong scent of him as he walked her steadily into the bedroom.

Their bedroom.

They’d painted his sheets with come and sweat long before now, but as he sets her gently down on the bed, Rey looks up at him and feels her body sing in response to the look he gives her. His dark eyes search up and down her body, taking her in like this, even though she’s just laying there, in the afternoon sunlight, skin dappled all over with the sunshine slanting in through his window-blinds. She isn’t posing for him, hasn’t found a way to coyly arrange her limbs or spread herself for him or thrust her chest out to make it more than what it is.

He looks at her like she’s enough. Like she’s more than enough.

“I want to see you, Clyde,” Rey says softly. “Please.”

He nods at this, and begins to remove his shirt. He tugs it off of his head, and the undershirt, too, one-handed and elegant and spare in his movements. Rey sits up on her knees, then, and hooks a hand through his belt loop, tugging him closer. Her hands work at his belt buckle, then into his fly, and she has his pants opened and his boxers pushed down just as he’s tossing aside his shirts. Rey can feel him stare down at her as she takes him in her hands.

She’ll never quite get over how big he is. How, well… humble he is about it, too. He never walks around like he’s got something magical between his legs. He just looks grateful, awed, when she holds him like this. Her hands barely encircle him, and when she pumps up and down his shaft he all but bucks into her grasp.

Rey leans down, and licks across the wet head of his cock.

God, she loves every noise he makes: The rough and the sweet, the eager growls and low whines. He’s so responsive, for such a quiet man. Like he draws all sound into himself, watching, observing, only giving it to her when she asks so very nicely. Or when her lips trail wetly down along the thick and straining side of him. She reaches the base of his cock, nuzzles in the dark, short hairs there, where the scent of him is stronger; her hand moving across his crown.

And Clyde, he just combs his hand through her hair, holding it, not tugging or urging, just steadying. _I got you_.

Rey takes him into her mouth.

His hips always buck forward when she does this, like he can’t stop himself—the first time she did this for him, after closing time, on her knees behind the bar, he did it a bit too hard and immediately apologized but Rey had loved it, loved the way he throws his head back and groans and the way his breath speeds up as she speeds up. She moves her hand around to feel up the inside of his thigh, there were the hairs have worn short from the jeans he wears. His balls move a little as he moves in her mouth. And she gets her mouth nice and wet for him, sucking down, working her hand on his shaft in the slick mess she’s made.

Before Clyde, doing this was… a semi-necessary inconvenience. A thing she didn’t mind doing, but—

The noise he makes when she flutters her tongue around his sensitive head makes all thoughts, all comparisons, dissolve like snow in the sunshine.

“I want to come inside of you,” he says, his voice strained, hand tightening, just a bit. “I could come just like this, all over your pretty face, but I want to be inside.”

Rey pulls off of his cock with a wet noise, licking her lips, looking up at his expression. He pets her hair, just draws his fingers through the curls, catching a little on the hairspray that Mellie had put in to get it to keep shape. Rey should feel degraded, on her knees, being petted, but oh, the look in his eyes is pure adoration.

“Alright,” she says. “How do you want me, Mr. Logan?”

His dick actually twitches in her hand. His pupils are so wide in his eyes, the amber almost looks black.

“I want you to ride me,” he says.

Rey nods, and her body clenches down as she stands, feeling empty and needy, eager to be drawn to completion. The things he does to her, the way he makes her _feel…_

Clyde gets on the bed, long body stretched out, pants and boxers and shoes and socks discarded on his floor. Rey crawls atop him, underwear somewhere on the headboard where he'd thrown it, kissing each tender, secret place, and he urges her on, with _yes please_  and _like that_ and _darlin’_ as she finds her way to face him.

And he is… big. He’s proportional, with big feet and a wide wingspan and his height… Rey takes hold of his cock, pulling it a little away from where it strains up towards his belly button. As wet as she is for him, she could take him, but instead she watches his face as she drags the head of him against her, back and forth, stopping to circle it around her clit.

His hand goes to her hip, his forearm caressing her thigh while she straddles him.

“Please, I need you—”

How can she deny him?

Rey smiles, and settles his cock against her entrance. He could move, now, just fuck up into her and sheathe himself in one rough stroke, but instead he just fixes his gaze on the way she slides, slowly, down. She smiles a little, feeling that familiar, wonderful, aching stretch—she’ll never get used to this, this will never be commonplace for her or mundane—as she eases him inside.

“Mrs. Logan, you take my cock so good,” he says, his voice a rasp of need and restrained desire.

Rey just groans. Takes him in, and in, and in. She settles her legs on each side of him a little wider, and begins to ride.

* * *

 

She takes him like that, and they fall together, his burnt-sugar voice urging her on, praising her, babbling—who’d have thought the man was a talker, when you get right down to it? And then, dozing, he wakes her with his mouth on her skin, easing into her from behind as he draws her leg up for easier access. She loves him like this, loves him any which way—on hands and knees before him, bent over the bar with him fucking her from behind, pressed safely under his weight as his hips grind against her…

After, when the night falls, and wraps its darkness around them, Rey lays beside him, and listens to his heartbeat.

“I love you,” he says. “I hope you know that.”

“I do know that,” she says in return, lazy and sleepy and sated in his arms. She wriggles down in the blankets, tucked in her favorite spot, right up against his body while he lays on his back.

“Mm,” he says, and it’s as much a sound as it is a feeling, that rumble in his chest. Rey shivers. Her body is still slick with their lovemaking and she’s almost ready for him again, when he does that. But she yawns; sleep wins out, this time.

They’ll have tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. On and on and on, together.

“I love you,” Clyde says again. “I didn’t even know what it felt like. But it feels like this.”

Rey looks up at him, taking in his familiar profile in the low light. “Like what?”

“Like you… like everything is just… simpler,” he says. “You make things simpler. You walked in and I saw you and I thought, _there she is_. Like I’d been waiting for you, and I didn’t even know it.”

Rey fees her throat grow thick with emotion; tears prick behind her eyes, and she lifts her hand to wipe at them so the room doesn’t get too blurry.

“I feel like that too,” she says, when the tears have mostly been cleaned, and her hand is, once again, resting on his heart. “I feel it too.”

“Mmm,” he says, and leans a little so he can kiss the top of her hair. Rey closes her eyes, feels his intake of breath, and knows that this is it. This is what the poets and the songwriters and everyone writes about. This is the feeling, the ebb and flow of what they share. It’s not grand or explosive; it’s not a shout in a crowded theater. Love is this moment. Quiet stillness, breath and heartbeats. The taste of him still on her tongue. The feel of him, beside her body. He is warm, and she leans into him, and he, in turn, holds her close.

They sleep.

* * *

 

“...and you weren’t plannin’ on tellin’ me this at all?” Jimmy says, a little irate as he looks between his brother and… well, she’d be his sister-in-law, now, he supposes. “Or invitin’ me up for the wedding, or nothin’?”

Clyde shrugs. “We didn’t have a wedding, just went to the courthouse, two weeks back. Didn’t seem necessary, and we figured we’d tell you when we saw you.”

“Didn’t seem _necessary_?”

Clyde has the temerity to level a completely steady look at his brother. “You had a big ol’ mess of a wedding, and look how that turned out.”

Jimmy tilts his head back and laughs and laughs at this one, catching sight of his brother’s shy dimples as the teasing jibe perfectly hits its mark. Oh he can give his little brother shit, and surely he can learn to take it right back. Plus, it’s not like he’s wrong. He and Billie Jo did indeed have a big ol’ mess of a wedding, from the frothy white dress to the cake that was more shortening than actual cake, to the fight they’d had the morning of that nearly had called the whole thing off. Maybe it would’ve been better, Jimmy thinks, if it had—although they did get Sadie out of the mess, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing ever. And they’re almost civil to each other now, so… things are alright.

But these two? Jimmy knows that they’re not like him and Billie Jo. Not at all. For one thing, Clyde isn’t like him; he’s not the kind of man to do things to keep up appearances, to compromise on the essentials, to let other people dictate his life like that.

A woman who loves him, well, she’d have to be pretty special. Rey doesn’t seem to be much like Billie Jo.

Beside him, Jimmy sees that Rey is blushing, smiling up at Clyde with an expression of amusement and something like a private joke between them.

“Well, congratulations to you both, and welcome to the family,” Jimmy says, raising his beer and toasting them. “I wish you the very best and hope you two make less of a hash of it than I did. Seems like you’re on the way there already.”

Rey clinks the neck of her bottle against Jimmy’s, and Clyde pulls down a shot glass while he talks, filling himself a shot and joining in the toast.

“Two weeks, huh?” Jimmy says, “Wow. I really ought to come up more often. Who knows what else I might miss if I wait too long.”

Clyde blushes out to his ears at this, and looks down at the lower counter of the bar, cleaning the tops of the bottles of well liquor. Jimmy looks over at Rey, who averts his eyes, but takes a big ol’ slug of her beer like she’s sending some sort of unspoken message.

And Jimmy says… absolutely nothing.

* * *

 

The three of them stay late, talking and laughing, trading stories. Jimmy likes Rey, he decides; he likes how gentle she is, how clever. She’s good for Clyde, and even if this thing is impulsive, even if it’s fast, it seems right. The two of them connect in a way that… well, Jimmy’s never quite seen before.

He bids the newlyweds goodnight, and heads out to his truck. As he’s getting in, he catches sight of Clyde, come over to the passenger side of his own truck, opening the door and helping Rey up. Jimmy shakes his head, a smile growing on his face at the fact that Clyde lingers there, kissing on her.

Jimmy starts his car, taps the horn once, watches Clyde jump.

His brother doesn’t even glare over at him, just flips him off. Jimmy laughs again.

His little brother. Married.

It sure is a bewildering thought.

Jimmy follows Clyde as he drives out of the bar’s parking lot. The night’s soft velvet sky stretches out above him, treeline to treeline, like being in an upturned bowl of night. He smiles to himself, reaches down and turns the stereo on.

It only takes a moment.

An instant later, Jimmy looks up to see a hot-rod speed out from an intersection to the right. It doesn’t slow down, doesn’t even hesitate. And before Clyde can even swerve, the other car connects, T-boning the truck in a fierce scream of metal.

On instinct, Jimmy pulls over to the side of the road, just as his brother’s truck skids sideways, out of the lane and pushed down into the ditch from the force of the collision. Glass scatters on the pavement. Jimmy’s pulse thunders in his ears.

And his brother’s voice echoes through his mind. _The Logan curse._

He wrenches on the emergency brake, leaving his keys in the ignition, leaving the door open as he runs frantically across the highway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're welcome / I'm sorry?


	3. Chapter 3

Clyde is out for only seconds, coming to with ears ringing and looking around the interior of the car, catching sight of the dusting of fallen snow that lays across his skin, the dash, the fabric of the seat…

No. Not snow: Glass.

Then:

“Rey!”

All of the blood in his body runs cold when he sees her, slumped against the inside of the truck, not moving at all. The seatbelt is still across her chest, but he’s too shaken, too keyed-up to see if she’s breathing at all. He’s not even sure if _he’s_ breathing. It’s like he’s fallen into ice.

And her name tears out of him on an anguished cry.

“Rey!”

In a rush, all of his training comes back to him. He unbuckles his own seatbelt, edges over to her, hands ghosting over her skin, shaking. Don’t move her; stabilize her, stabilize any potential injuries— _oh Jesus is she injured, is she hurt, is—_

Clyde feels his door open up, feels the cooling night air rush in, feels a hand on his arm, and without thinking he reacts, turning and grappling with whoever is there, whoever dares try and take him from her—

“Clyde!”

It’s Jimmy.

“Oh shit, Clyde, your face…”

His face… his face doesn’t matter.

“Rey,” is all Clyde can manage. Something wet is dripping into his eye, stinging, and there’s bile rising in his throat, and he feels like he’s gonna be sick, or punch something, or both. He wipes at the mess, clears his eyes, and looks back at his wife.

Rey’s still not moving.

“The other driver called it in,” Jimmy is saying, hand still on his arm. “You alright? Anything broken?”

Clyde can’t even process that question. His gaze is fixed on Rey.

“Don’t move her, now,” Jimmy says. “Just stay put, both of you.”

 _The other driver…_ Clyde remembers, now. And he’s up outta his seat, blood pumping in his veins, rage filling him as he shoves Jimmy aside and heads for the other driver’s mangled car.

It’s some young, dumb kid in a souped-up car—and Clyde sees red. The kid’s just shaking off the effects of his collision, the collapsed airbag resting in his lap, powdery dust flying everywhere. Clyde goes over to him, tugs on the handle of the driver-side door, driven by some unholy force to drag the dumb motherfucker out by his shirtfront, make him hurt the way he made Rey hurt—

Jimmy calls out to him. Clyde can’t hear it, though—and the door doesn’t budge. The frame of the car is just too crumpled in, warped and twisted from the impact. The red around his vision shifts to gray, to black, like he’s being gripped by some unholy power, these urges for vengeance, violence, they’re so foreign to him, and yet they rush back in, familiar and frightening, like smoke filling all the empty and abandoned corners of his consciousness… Jimmy’s got his hands on Clyde’s arm, but Clyde still hauls back with his fist, aiming for the driver, who’s looking up at him, bewildered and terrified and looking like he’s seen the Devil himself—Jimmy just pulls on Clyde’s arm, sending him off-balance just enough that the punch makes contact with the frame of the car, and not the driver’s face.

Sirens howl in the distance.

Clyde comes back to himself, shaking, his fist pulsing with pain.

_Rey._

He looks back over at the truck, peering through the passenger-side window. The bright flashing lights of the ambulance and police reflect off the glass, make it so that he can’t see her face, can’t see if she’s moving, if she’s covered in red light or covered in blood.

And it’s all too much. Clyde leans against the car, forgetting, just for a moment, that he’s in the here and now. Everything rushes into him, the memories breaking over him like floodgates pouring open. The bomb, and the heat of the blast; the grit of the desert in his boots, in his socks; the feel of the wind on his bare neck. Pain. He isn’t here, in the road; he’s back there, back in a place he never wants to go. He goes to put his left hand down to steady himself, and he stumbles. Jimmy’s there to catch him.

While he closes his eyes, back up in the truck, Rey opens hers.

* * *

“You two are lucky,” the ER doctor says, as he surveys the pair of them. Clyde’s been offered his own seat, but he’s sitting with Rey on the padded exam table, holding her, alternating between fretting over the little cut on her cheek and smoothing down the blankets on her lap.

The lights overhead are bright. Too bright.

Clyde just wants to close his eyes. But if he does, then he won’t be able to look at Rey. If he does, he might see that creeping red again. He might see—

“Just a little banged up, but no major injuries,” the doctor continues. “No signs of… trauma, or concussion. Which is, all things considered, pretty remarkable. Keep ice on that hand though, you can come back in if the swelling doesn’t go down. X-ray was a bit cloudy on that possible fracture.”

Clyde nods, not even looking at the doctor. His forehead feels tight under the medical tape on his brow, and his hand is throbbing, two fingers taped together in a splint, which of course is just the thing a man like him needs. But Rey’s alright.

She’s alright.

* * *

They head back home, driven by an uncharacteristically silent Jimmy. Clyde slides over to make room for Rey on the single bench seat of Jimmy’s truck, but Rey chases him down, tucks herself against him like she’s the salt to his pepper shaker. A matched set.

Jimmy brings them up to the front of the house, fretting over them, watching as Clyde helps Rey down from the truck and up the front steps like she’s a child learning to walk. She doesn’t need it—the doctor said they were alright to go, didn’t even need overnight observation—but it feels good all the same, to help her.

And Rey knows, this is more about him—his needs, his urge to comfort and protect—in this moment. In another lifetime, she might have bristled at a man’s gentle help, asserted her independence, but it felt so good, to just let him take care of her.

He helps her down to the bed, and Rey sits on the edge while he crouches to take her shoes off.

“You alright while I go talk to Jimmy for a sec?” Clyde asks her, watching her with tender, curious eyes.

Rey nods.

“Alright,” he says, and rises up a bit to kiss her on the forehead. “Won’t be but a minute. You go on, lay down.”

Rey nods. Clyde hesitates just a moment longer, so visibly reluctant to leave her side, before standing, and heading back out the door.

Slowly, Rey exhales. She’s still rattled from it all. Who wouldn’t be? She’s never been in a car accident before, unless she counts the time a group of her stupid school friends with brand-new licenses rear-ended a lady driving too slowly in a parking lot. This is… different.

Rey gingerly peels off her top and shimmies out of her jeans. All things considered, she feels remarkably well, other than just… rattled. Her injuries don’t feel physical anymore—and it’s as if more time has passed than she can account for, like she’s healed up under Clyde’s gentle touch. Like she’s spent years in his arms, lifetimes. She has no sense of what time it actually is, ether, and she’s at that point where she’ll either be up until sunrise or fall asleep and drown in the bath. So Rey discards  undergarments, as well as the idea of taking a quick soak, and slips under the sheets, waiting for Clyde to come back inside.

She feels almost overwhelmed by restless energy—especially because he’s not here beside her, to ground her and anchor her—but Rey must doze off a little, because she wakes to the sound of the front door closing.

Clyde comes in, then; Rey rolls over, and smiles up at him.

“Come to bed,” she says.

And he nods, and he almost shakes himself a little, like he’s in a daze, before reading up to the buttons on his shirt and working them free, one by one.

Rey watches him, adjusting her position, snuggling under the sheets; they’re such a paltry substitute for his embrace, and she yearns for his body heat now.

“You alright?”

He nods again. “Just… glad you’re alright, is all.”

But Rey can feel that something’s off. Not just the accident—she feels it in the air, between them. There’s something on his mind, and she desperately wants to know what it is.

And something deeper, too.

She closes her eyes, and thinks back to the moment of impact.

“Clyde,” Rey begins—but her voice stops in her throat. She can’t quite get the words out. Doesn’t know where, exactly, to begin.

His hand reaches the bottom of his shirt, and he slowly begins to tug the hem of it out of the waistband of his jeans. But he stops, and just sits there.

He doesn’t move. Rey sits up, caught under the tension of the sheets for a moment, then adjusting, moving to sit on her knees beside him. She smooths a careful hand across the warmth of his shoulders.

 _Just say it_ , she thinks.

So she takes a breath, and tries again.

“Right before the car hit, I… saw… something,” Rey says. Her voice is soft and careful, deliberate, like she’s afraid of saying something wrong. “There was this… light. Not from his headlights, not from anything. Just a light. I had turned to look at you and I saw you, and you were… covered in this light. Silver, like… moonlight.”

Clyde looks up at her slowly. It’s the first time he’s seen her look… frightened.

Not frightened of him, he can tell. But… he doesn’t understand.

“You saw… a light?”

Rey nods, and she looks down at her hands, reaching over with both of them to gently cradle his bandaged one. “I did. Maybe it was just… a way for my brain to… to try and process the accident. But I don’t think it was.”

“Well,” he says slowly, watching her thumbs as they caress the edge of his bandage. “What do you reckon it was?”

She shrugs. It’s a casual motion, pretty in the way it moves the blankets down from the roll of her shoulders… but Clyde senses, though, that there’s more she wants to say. So he waits. And, at length, she takes another breath.

“When I was seven years old, there was a fire in the house I’d been placed in,” she says softly. “I’d only been with that family for a few weeks, and they were… at any rate, it had started downstairs, when someone fell asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette. There were no fire alarms in the house, nothing. I woke up and the smoke was already there, in my room. I got out of the bed and I went to the door, and I remember it was hot. But I was tired, and I opened it anyway. The smoke rushed in, then, and I saw the fire… but… then it was… I can’t explain it, it was the same light, that I saw around you. Silver. It… pushed back the smoke. I closed the door and I went to the window, and I climbed down and fell to the grass.”

She looks up at him, lifts her right hand a little. “I broke my wrist, this one, when I fell. But I was the only one who got out of that.”

Clyde meets her gaze, gently lifts the hand in question and presses a gentle bracelet of kisses all around the wrist.

“I believe you,” he says, when he lowers her hand gently back down. “Were you worried that I wouldn’t?”

“Honestly?” Rey says with a little nervous laugh. “A bit. I’ve only told a few people that story. Sometimes I don’t even believe it myself. I used to think, maybe I just… dreamed it. Maybe it was like a leftover image, from sleep. But when I saw it again, with you…”

Her voice trails off.

Clyde shifts a little on the bed. “What do you think it is?”

Rey shrugs. “I don’t know. But I do know that things could’ve been a lot worse, in the accident. And with the fire. Maybe it’s… something that’s always been there for me, a… guardian, of some sort. Twice, now, being afraid or in danger has… woken it up. I mean, I’m not particularly religious but… maybe there’s something out there.”

She shrugs again. So hopeful, he thinks. So frightened, that he’ll tell her she’s nuts, or that she was imagining things.

Clyde studies his beautiful wife’s face. “If you say there’s something there, then I believe you. But...”

“What is it?”

He shakes his head. Ashamed, and overcome. He doesn’t deserve her.

“Clyde, talk to me, please.” She kisses the side of his face, brushes his long hair back behind his ear, kisses that too. “I told you about the light, there’s nothing you can say that will frighten me away.”

She’s too good. How can he… Clyde takes a breath, forcing it to be slow and steady and even, before he speaks.

“My brother and sister never believed me either, when I told them about the curse.” His fist curls in his lap, pain radiating up his wrist, up his arm; a reminder that he’s alive, he supposes. “They thought it was crazy. Or that I was just... seein' the worst in everything. But here, we get in an accident, and you—”

“I don’t believe in any curses,” Rey says, stubbornly. “We could’ve been hurt tonight, but we weren’t.”

“My arm—”

“—could’ve been worse, but it wasn’t,” Rey presses forward, remembering the story he’d told her, about how it had happened, the roadside mine. “It could’ve… Do you honestly think I could find a better man than you? Because I’ve been in more places than I can count anymore, and there’s no one, no one in the world, who makes me feel the way you do.”

Clyde says her name softly—little more than a gentle exhale. “When I saw that you were hurt, I thought you were… you might be… and I couldn’t bear it. I can’t be without you.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not going anywhere.”

He sighs, though, and shakes his head. “You’ve had this… light around you. But I don’t have that, Rey. There’s a… there’s something dark in me, sometimes…”

“Then I’ll just have to be bright enough for the both of us,” Rey continues, undaunted. “You’re not gonna frighten me away.”

“Maybe… maybe you deserve a man who’s—”

“Clyde, don’t you _dare_ finish that sentence—”

“—not _cursed_ ,” he chokes on the words. “Rey, you coulda been killed tonight.”

“But I wasn’t,” she says. “And we’re fine. You heard what the doctor said. We’re lucky, you and me.”

Clyde sobs. He lowers his head down into his hand, covers his face. And Rey watches him for a long moment, before coming up off the bed and wrapping her arm around him.

“Maybe I like a bit of your darkness,” she whispers. And there it is, he thinks: Right at the heart of the matter. It’s more than just the accident, more than just the so-called Logan curse. It’s him—all the ways he’s broken, all the ways he frightens even himself sometimes. The last time something like this had happened, he’d been holding a bag of gummy bears, waiting for another explosion, feeling his heart pounding through the irrational fear of it all as the memory had overshadowed him. He'd gone back there, only for an instant. Back to the sand and the desert. Back to the bomb, and the blood, and the bone. She deserves a man who… who doesn’t live with that. Who won’t shout her awake in the middle of the night. Who doesn’t sometimes get stuck in his own nightmares. Isn’t waiting for the blow to strike.

But Rey’s running her hands along his shoulders, scratching her nails down his back.

How can he be aroused by that, at a time like this? It isn’t right.

“Clyde,” she says softly, rising up on her knees beside him, leaning over a little so she can touch more of him. He’s just sitting on the edge of their bed, shirt unbuttoned but still hanging on his wide shoulders.

Her hands find his warm skin, touching, grounding; he makes a soft sort of a noise as her fingertips trace the lines of his body.

“Where do you go, when you go away like that?”

Clyde turns to look at her. His hand comes up, and he covers hers, pressing it flat. At first she fears it’s because she doesn’t want her to touch him anymore. Then, Rey realizes, it’s because he needs her steady hand the same way she needs his.

He doesn’t have to say it. She just knows.

His heartbeat is steady and sure beneath her touch. Calming, now. She can feel it.

“Don’t go there without me,” Rey continues. “Alright?”

He nods. “Alright.”

From there, it’s natural, the most natural thing in the world to kiss her.

Her knees are still trapped under the sheets, and his hand rushes over to rescue her from them just as she grabs onto his open shirt—causing a minor negotiation of limbs and a soft, shared laugh, warm and sweet between their mouths as they come up for air.

Kissing him is… it’s diving deep, sinking in, being subsumed completely in warmth and quiet darkness. And Rey’s never been afraid of the dark. Only the bright light of scrutiny, cold daylight’s disregard; he sees her, here in the darkness. He sees her, skin and soul and everything, and he does not turn away.

Rey matches him taste for taste, touch for touch. She’s nude beneath the sheets when he draws them back to reveal her, and for a moment, the way his eyes trace down her body, she thinks he’s going to go down on her, as he loves to do—and she loves it, too, but it isn’t what she wants, or what she needs.

 _There’s a darkness in me,_ she thinks—uncertain whether it’s her voice saying it, or his. Maybe they’ve blended together, two sides of the same mirrored coin, endlessly reflecting back on the other. He is not so broken, and she is not so pure. Together, they muddle out and paint everything in gray like the world around them in the ancient, moon-lit darkness. Gray angles, gray lines. Gray bodies, touching, needing, reaching.

His hand cups her, down below. Palm huge and hot and steady on her curls, finger just teasing the edge of a damp seam.

“You’re wet for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Rey says. “You can feel for yourself.”

The corner of his lips quirk into a smile, but it’s not a kindness there. Rey shivers, her whole body quickening like lightning-touched ground.

“I want you,” he says simply. “Rey, I—”

“Then take me,” she answers.

Something in his face changes. Rey can’t explain what, or how. It must be four in the morning by now, on beyond exhaustion, adrenaline burned off into what ought to be a weariness that draws her gently down into the comforts of sleep. But instead, there’s something else. Something charged, and heady.

Rey waits. Holds herself perfectly still as her husband cups her cunt. He doesn’t press a finger in, doesn’t tease around the clit or bring her off. He just slowly, slowly traces the slick she’s making for him. Like he’s trying to decide on something. Or talk himself into something.

“Please,” Rey whispers. “I need you, please.”

And that’s it. Clyde rises from the bed, tugging at the belt and his jeans and kicking off his boots like a man possessed.

“Hands ‘n knees,” he growls. “Show me—”

Rey doesn’t even need to hear him finish before the pulse of blood rushing in her ears and the throb of need down between her legs is compelling her to action. She scrambles on the bed, going to her hands and knees, feeling the bed dip as he joins her. He’s behind her, kneeling on the bed; she can feel his radiant warmth, but she can’t see him. She sobs out softly, nearly delirious with the achy, needy feeling, and moves her hips back, trying to find contact.

“Shh,” he says, and he runs his arm down her hip, caressing her with a soothing touch. His skin feels just as heated as hers does, and somehow, it all just makes her shiver.

Rey bites her lip, and tries not to whine. The moment is too much, this tension lasting only seconds, but feeling drawn out, like she’s a bowstring being pulled back, aimed, and ready to fire. Behind her, she can just imagine how he must look: The broad shoulders and taut-muscled torso of him, the solidity of his waist and tracery of muscles on his shoulders; his arms, _fuck_ , his arms—she can feel the bed moving a little, feel the edge of his fist as she bumps back, and Rey whines desperately, thinking of him taking his cock in hand, working it in his fist and not giving it to her like she needs.

“Shh,” he says again. “I got you.”

Rey can feel everything: When he briefly lets go of himself to spread her wetness up around her parted folds; when his hand returns to his cock, and he guides the head of him against her entrance. Everything—the heartbeat between her legs, the contrast between his heated skin and the roughness of his bandage—and she should tell him _slow down, don’t hurt yourself, be careful_ —

Careful isn’t what she needs.

And from the way he sinks inside of her, on one long deep stroke, careful is not what he needs tonight, either.

Rey has only moments to catch her breath, and then he’s moving, setting a steady, sure pace, fucking up into her so deep, so perfect, her hands clench in the sheets and her body just… yields to him. He groans at the feeling of her, and Rey echoes his sound, just lets him fuck the noise right out of her throat, he’s in her so deep.

 _We’re alive,_ Rey thinks, half-delirious from the feel of him. _We’re alive, we’re alive—_

His hips pound into hers; Rey can hear the wet sounds they make together, his cock in her tight wet cunt, the perfect stretch, even deeper when he’s in her like this. There’s something almost sacred about feeling him lose control; the gentleman in him, the proper, shy man who’s too big for his skin and too wide for his heart is at home when he’s inside of her, and Rey revels in the surrender of it. If he is her blood, then she is his veins; he pulses, like a heartbeat, within her. She lets him move her onto him, any way he likes. He’s sharp and a little rough at first, fucking like an affirmation, like defiance. Rey rolls her head back and gasps and whimpers beneath him. Just gives herself over to it, to him _—_ to this moment, this thing they share and will never fully understand. She is drawn into him, but it isn’t as a moth to a flame; it’s as a flame to a flame, and the fire only doubles, and grows, and surges between them.

Shuddering gasps of praise and filth tumble from his lips as he fucks her. Rey can barely process it, the fragments of words and phrases that send shivers on her skin each place they fall.

_good girl—_

_so wet for me—_

_so good—_

_take it—_

_Rey—_

She can feel his hand on her hip, his forearm, too, steadying her, sweat on his skin and fire growing in her veins. The initial ferocity of him lessens but only by a degree; Rey moans in delight as he finds the rhythm she craves: a sharp thrust in, a slightly slower withdrawal. Again, and again, and again, and _—_

 _Fuck_ , she thinks; she can almost feel every ridge of him inside, every vein. He hits the front wall of her tight channel with each movement, making the pressure inside of her tighten and contract and build to the inevitable peak. She can’t even get her hands up off the bed to work one down there, rub at her clit. Like this, she won’t even need to. Hell, she isn’t even sure she has hands anymore, at this point. The pressure, the pleasure, it’s all too overwhelming.

Almost too much.

 _Not yet,_ Rey thinks, half-delirious with pleasure and want. _Not yet. I want more. I want it all_.

She can’t even speak as he fucks her. Just whimpers and gasps and he likes it, he fucking loves it, when she’s loud for him. Rey has abandoned all modesty and fear with him; in another life she might be ashamed at the sounds he fucks out of her, but she’s not.

Her first climax hits her like a sudden crest of a wave: fierce and dangerous and gushing-wet. Rey shudders and comes for what feels like hours beneath him, feeling herself clench down on his cock as his pace doesn’t even let up. He fucks her through it, wet sliding down the back of her thighs, tears on her face from the overwhelming emotions coursing through her veins.

It’s good.

It’s so good.

 _Do I make you feel good?_   She’d asked him that, the first time they’d been together.

Thinking this might just be a… quick, physical thing. Release, nothing more.

And it’s not.

It’s become so much more _—well, obviously; you’re married—_ so much more—

She can’t think straight anymore.

Clyde lifts his hand from her hip, draws it up to clench in her hair, pulling it into a rough ponytail and tugging. Rey gasps and lets him pull it, knowing he’d never hurt her, knowing that he needs this the way she does, this surrender, this acknowledgement that they lived.

Delirious with it, Rey tightens around him, clenching her inner muscles, and _—there,_ she thinks. She feels his hips stutter, his breath catch in his throat on the next sharp intake. The hand on her hair tightens, he pulls, and Rey revels in the answering sting of awareness at her scalp. She’s going to come again.

“Good,” is all Clyde can manage to say, and whether it’s an acknowledgement of words she’s slurred or just some kind of praise or nonsense, it’s enough.

Rey flexes her muscles around him, and _—like that, come for me, like that—_ feeling him as he drives in deep, so deep, pumps his hips as he comes with a high, wrecked noise.

He leans over her, then, bending to nip at her neck and shoulders mindlessly as the pleasure takes him, and Rey follows him down to the bed. He’s big enough, thick enough inside of her, that he can nestle up behind her, roll his hips against her as the orgasm shudders through his body. And she spreads her legs, letting him stay inside, keeping him there and not pushing him off and away.

He rocks into her, the pressure against her g-spot even more acute now, and Rey can’t help herself. She’s so close. And he’s come already but there’s always a few long, lazy moments, after, when he stays hard for her… maybe she can… _yes._

So she slides a trembling hand down, down beneath her body, between her skin and the sheets where he’s pressed her down. She finds her clit, then, and circles it with tight, familiar movements, letting the second climax just wash over her, drape itself across her like his body. Being pinned down like this, contained, restrained _—_ it’s amazing, how thick and good he feels inside of her.

It’s sweet, that second peak. Slow and easy, like the reassuring roll of his hips, like the slide of his cock inside of her, the kiss of his mouth on her skin and the warm huff of his breath as he catches it.

Suddenly her weariness catches up with her, and as Clyde rolls off, he pulls her onto her side, nestling her ass back against his slowly-softening erection.

 _This_ , Rey thinks. _This_.

She feels him embrace her, feels him draw her tight to his chest, tuck his nose against her neck and breathe her in; and Rey, too, inhales, breathing in the scent of sex and sweat and their sheets. It covers over the antiseptic scent of the hospital, the fear of the crash, everything else outside that isn’t just him, and her. Her heartbeat steadies. His breathing deepens, and her eyes go shut.

They sleep, just like that, not moving until the sun is high overhead the next day.

* * *

“I love you,” she says, when they wake up together, bleary-eyed and tangled together in the sunlight.

“I love you,” he says, when he pulls her into the steam-filled shower stall, runs a washcloth over the bar of soap and proceeds to bathe her like she’s a newborn.

“I love you,” she says back to him, when he brings her coffee, and bacon, burnt just the way she likes it, even though it's two in the afternoon and not technically time for breakfast at all.

“I love you,” he says in his caress, when he sees her in his oversized t-shirt, catching the points of her nipples a little as his hand finds them under the fabric.

“I love you,” she whispers, tucked up against him on the porch that night, staring up at the stars.

He turns, and kisses her. He doesn’t have to say a thing. She knows.


End file.
